In recent years, in accordance with demands for recording a color image at cheap cost, inkjet recording methods, in which a plurality of different color inks are provided to recording medium (referred to as “recording medium” hereinbelow) having no coating layer, such as regular paper, to thereby record an image on the recording medium, are used. In this case, since the inks are provided to the recording medium having no coating layer, the inks are directly absorbed into paper serving as the base of the recording medium, and thus degradation in quality of the recording medium (referred to as “recorded matter” hereinbelow) which is recorded by ink bleeding easily occur.
Then, it can be considered that an image is recorded using an ink having low permeability to prevent the ink from penetrating through the recording medium and to thereby prevent bleeding (referred to as “feathering” hereinbelow) at a boundary portion between the recording medium and the ink in the recorded matter. However, in this case, the ink easily retains on a surface of the recording medium, and accordingly, the drying properties of the recorded matter degrade. When the drying properties of a recorded matter degrade, a finger or the like comes into contact with an ink that has not yet been dried to cause smear on images, and in the case where a color image is recorded, a different color ink is attached to the ink that has not yet been dried, and bleeding (referred to as “color bleeding” hereinbelow) occurs at a boundary portion between these inks. Meanwhile, when an ink having high permeability is used to prevent the occurrence of color bleeding, there is a problem that the above-noted feathering occurs and the quality of a resulting recorded matter degrades.
To simultaneously solve these problems, there has been proposed a recording method using an ink and a liquid composition for fixing the ink on a recording medium. For example, there has been proposed an inkjet recording method in which a reaction liquid containing polyallylamine and an ink composition which contains a colorant and a resin emulsion is made adhere to a surface of a recording medium to thereby perform recording (see PTL 1 describes that according to this method, print bleeding and printing nonuniformity can be reduced on a recording medium and further, color bleeding can be effectively prevented. However, this proposal has a problem in terms of fixability of the ink composition on a recording medium. In other words, when the ink composition is made to adhere to a surface of the recording medium on which the liquid composition has been made to adhere, the pigment and the resin emulsion contained in the ink come into contact with polyallylamine which is positively charged, and rapidly agglutinate, and thus aggregates containing a small amount of vehicle (which means a liquid component in the reaction liquid or the ink composition) are accumulated on the outermost surface layer of the recording medium. The accumulated layer is weak in resistance to abrasion (referred to as “abrasion resistance” hereinbelow”, and therefore, such a problem occurs that the rear surface of the recorded matter may be smeared with user's hand or ink. In addition, after an image recorded by this inkjet recording method was analyzed, it was found that the diameter of dots recorded was small. This can be considered due to a strong effect of the reaction liquid which causes the ink to agglutinate. When the diameter of dots is excessively small, there is a problem that white streaks (which means portions where no ink adheres) occur.
To solve the problem with abrasion resistance, there has been proposed an inkjet recording method in which an ink and a liquid composition containing specific polymer fine particles are made to adhere to a surface of a recording medium to thereby perform recording (see PTL 2). This proposal describes that it is possible to improve the abrasion resistance of recorded portions, because polymer fine particles contained in the liquid composition covers pixels of the ink.